Sechs Monate

We celebrate the sixth mensiversary and the milestone of half-anniversary, which we call the Sechs Monate to-day on Wednesday 25 June 2014.

At midnight to-night, we will remember 25/26th December 2013, exactly six months ago, when we climbed off the Air New Zealand flight which had brought us to Wellington on that memorable Christmas Day in the Sky from Sydney.

 
(Above): Cape Town, South Africa… six months ago….The last snap of the scene outside our eastern verandah at Dolphin Beach, just before leaving for the airport and the journey to Sydney via Johannesburg. Five minutes later, we closed the door on that chapter of our lives… and….

(Above): …. Reikorangi, New Zealand today …. six months seems like just yesterday, but also a surreal lifetime ago… Its an entirely different attitude in an entirely different time-zone…

Poor Cow

Driving along with Mom and Granny, Brynn’s ever-active eyes spotted what appeared to be a fallen cow in one of the roadside paddocks in Ngatiawa Road. We followed up the sighting with a quick trip back to the site to investigate from closer up.

It was certainly a cow, lying on its side in a mud-pool. A cow certainly in extreme distress, by the looks of things virtually motionless and probably beyond help.

(Above): The white cow with black markings lies between the tufts of grass in a virtual bog, quite obviously quite weak, and unable to move. Not a nice sight.

(Above): A close-up of the stricken animal.

Being unsure of the location of the owner of the creature, we posted an urgent notice on the Google-Reikorangi-Group to alert all subscribers in the valley, with someone possibly being able to assist and alert the owner as soon as possible.

A River Runs Through It

Robert Redford and Brad Pitt were in the Rocky Mountains in the early 1990’s, and now in 2014, we’re in the Tararua mountain range, Reikorangi valley with the Ngatiawa arm of the Waikanae River, to be more precise.

After the heavy rains at the end of April, we went for a short stroll up Ngatiawa Road (west) to see what that part of the valley holds for early autumn.

This arm of the Waikanae is joined lower down by other streams to eventually flow into the Tasman as the Waikanae River proper. The level of water rose relatively for a couple of days after the heavy showers, but has since subsided into its babbling brook nature once more. Here we are standing on the (single-lane) Kents Road traffic bridge.

(Above): Shane’s property borders along the left bank of the river and includes the bridge area. Here Shane’s Billy sports the latest style in goats-wear (in their favourite colour)….

 
(Above) … while Shane’s Milly walks in the udder… sorry, other, direction. By the way, does this outfit make my bum look big? Billy and Milly are names I use purely for ease of reference – not even sure whether Shane indulges in this naming-thing…

Ngatiawa Road is a “No Exit” country road (called a “Cul-de-sac” in some countries). On this dead-end arm of the road, we encountered this newly fallen tree – quite a large specimen, but causing no damage or harm to traffic or life and limb – just like nature intended in the days of Adam and Eve and their kids… and goats… if they had.

 
(Above): Compared to a couple of months ago, the verges and adjoining vegetation have very little in the way of floral displays. We spotted quite a few of these which resemble Chinkerichee flowers, but the plant structure is different. Maybe something like “may-bells” – maybe a reader can help? Anyway, pretty and clean.

 
All along the verge embankment next to the roadside streams, toadstools and mushrooms of various sizes and descriptions can be found…

Whilst I wasn’t too sure about this toadstool/mushroom argument, I did some reading up on the subject. I still haven’t changed my mind and can confirm: Don’t listen to old-wives-tales or family rules: What remains important about toadstools and mushrooms are the following facts:

• They are the same and no scientific distinction exists between them.
• They cannot be defined by shape, color, or appearance, since there is no standard differentiation between them.
• Mushrooms aren’t fungi with caps and stems while toadstools lack caps and stems.
• Fungi are not defined by level of toxicity: anything classed as either may be nontoxic, mildly toxic, hallucinogenic or extremely poisonous.
• People should never consume anything classed as toadstool or mushroom without having it first examined by a professional mushroom hunter.

(Above): Not only does a River Run Through It , but there are many little streams which run all over the shop. This one trickles road-side for hundreds of metres, until it takes a sharp right turn and heads for the river. If you stop to listen, besides the birds here and there, the gentle babbling of the shallow water over the small pebbles is all the breaks the silence of the clear fresh air…

(Above): Although Mayday was cloudless, the air was still quite crisp and a light jumper not out of place. Here, near the end of the road, the girls took time-out to sit in the warm sunshine and to soak up the sounds of the birds and the river in the distance, for a while before setting off back home.

(Above): To their left, Ngatiawa Road with the lush green kaleidoscope of vegetation overhead and all around – a voyage of discovery for a budding botanist, and (Below) rolling green mountains into the distance.

Holy hedgehogs

Being kind to animals is one thing. But, when animals take advantage of kindness and make a nuisance of themselves, that’s where one has to draw the line. One such animal is the common hedge-hog.

Far from being cute and cuddly (except for their pups /piglets /hoglets), the local Reikorangi hedgehogs are persistent, with carelessness as their second name, when being in close proximity to anything resembling Bennie’s turf.

Bennie is unable to resist picking up these little critters whenever he encounters one in the shrubbery. He carefully picks them up in his huge jaw, with just sufficient jaw pressure to restrain the creature and not causing any damage to the inside of his mouth. He then brings the prize inside and places it on the floor in a prominent position for all to see. Once he is praised for his prowess as a hunter, Bennie’s interest in the prickly beings immediately wanes.

Our task then is to dispose of the surviving hedgehog in a spot where he will be safe from re-capture. When the hedgehog in question is captured in a dead/dying state, there is no problem with disposal – fling him over the fence into the neighbour’s grazing paddock. But, the live and mobile ones present much more of a problem: their intelligence is of such a level that they do not understand that re-entry to the Chartwell ground might involve a certain demise. 

The policy is to carefully place the living ones in the undergrowth about 4 kilometres away, near St Andrew’s Anglican Church, which is on the way to the station, the shops and the rest of the outside world from Reikorangi Valley, roughly half the distance from Kents Road to the Waikanae town centre.

(Above): The dotted red line indicates the route from Kents Road to a patch of gardens and shrubbery opposite St Andrew’s, via Ngatiawa Road to Reikorangi Road.

There must have now been close on to a dozen hogs which have been transported from Kents Road to opposite the church for re-cycling.  I can only say Holy hedgehogs!

Our Second Mensiversary

MEN-SI-VER-SA-RY (mèn´se-vûr´se-rê) noun
1. The monthly recurring date of a past event, especially one of historical, national, or personal importance: a first date mensiversary;
2. A celebration commemorating such a date. From Latin: mensis, month + versus, past participle of vertere, to turn.

Two months ago to the day, we arrived in New Zealand from Cape Town on an Air New Zealand flight just on midnight Christmas 2013. That’s still a point of contention, as I believe that we officially touched New Zealand, so to speak, just after 00:00 on 26th December, yet the passport control officers had not yet changed their date stamp from 25th to the 26th. Today is therefore our second mensiversary of our arrival here. How time flies.

Before someone starts pointing out the discrepancy of my statements versus the posting dates of my blogs: please note that I registered this blog in its old format in Cape Town (SAST = UTC+2 hours), and have continued with the same page in Reikorangi (NZDT = UTC+13 hrs – summer daylight-saving time). Therefore the orange-gold date (which is automatically generated) which you see at the top of the post (see example below) refers to Cape Town time and is generally a day behind the actual post date.

NZST (the standard time UTC+12 hours) starts at 3:00am  on Sunday 6 April 2014 and lasts until 3:00am on Sunday 28 September 2014.

Some highlights during the two months include the following (hyperlinks to the specific blogs are indicated in the orange-gold colour.

2nd January 2014: Visited Otaki Forks park.

7th January 2014: Visited St Andrew’s in Reikorangi. (must still go inside as well)

12th January 2014: Visited the Lavender Farm at Te Horo, near Otaki

19th January 2014: Attended the A.P. & I. show at Levin.

20th January 2014: As a taste of her hospitality, Mother Earth sampled us with a short Magnitude 6.2 earthquake centred at nearby Eketahuna at 3:50pm on Monday 20 January (Wellington provincial holiday).

25th January 2014: Visit the Waikanae home gardens show, hosted by Waikanae Lions.

20th February 2014: A pleasant walk in the Kaitawa Scenic Reserve

St Andrew’s

St Andrew’s Church and Hall ( Te Whare Karakia me te Horo o Saint Andrew)

On our way to Wellington this morning, we quickly popped in at St Andrew’s. I checked a bit of the past history: Between 1892 and 1893 Reikorangi was surveyed and the ‘Church Acre’ was laid out to include a school, town hall, church, churchyard and a store. The land was donated by the Parata family. With a growing population and only a rough track to reach Waikanae (then known as Parata Village), the need for a church became urgent. In 1959 a vestry and chancel were added. The church’s bell, from the wreck of the Devon in Wellington harbour in 1913, still calls the people of the valley to worship.

Just a few kilometres from us is the tiny Anglican church of St Andrew at the confluence of Reikorangi Road, Ngatiawa Road and Akatarawa Road in the Reikorangi valley area.

On the far side of the tiny church lies a steep downhill with a series of well-kept gardens.

The flag of St….. no guessing there!

Down below on the ground this mosaic tile laid in the walkway … more of the same.

First stroll : Terrace Road

Our second day in the Reikorangi valley sees us taking our very first walk in New Zealand – a stroll around the neighbourhood, really. Turn left up Kents Road and you end up in Terrace Road, a ‘no exit’ road, a cul-de-sac, if you wish. Benny and Sophie are left to guard their turf, while the human counterparts glance up at a threatening skyline…

 
Just a few metres up Kents Road, we encounter the source of the bovine chorus which I’d heard a few times earlier during the day. Free range milk on hoof, as supplied by Mrs Cuddy. Thankfully, there’re no flies around, to speak of.

 
Like a true Dr Who, Brynn could be snapped a number of times doing a high speed run ahead to explore and discover. And, on a couple of occasions, running back again to urge us on to inspect her discoveries. Her unending energy is astonishing. That’s the T-junction of Kents Road with Terrace Road in the distance,

 
A short distance up Terrace Road, I spot a field of sheep. A few are of the mountaineering persuasion, and I snapped this shot of them showing off on a fairly steep grazing hill.

Brynn ran ahead to stand and wait while I got a shot.

“Dunwurkin” – a real good Scottish name. We met the owner of the property on the return leg of our walk.

 
I suspect that Brynn has spotted an interesting animal somewhere in the distance.

Owner of Dunwurkin, a keen bowman explains some of the finer aspects to Tyler, who attends archery classes regularly down Reikorangi Road.

 
Tyler meets up with a pair of goats munching grass next to the roadway fence.

 
Meet Billy, Tyler’s newest acquaintance.

Now we discover what Brynn had spotted. This furry ball was promptly named “Midnight”. It was quite a job persuading Midnight that he should get back inside his owner’s property.

While the owner of the property across the way made no bones about what he wants.

Jeanette admires the foliage on some of the trees/shrubs along the way.

Part of the “Two Fold Mini Highlands” population look at us in apparent bewilderment.

Family on the downward leg back home in Kents Road.

Brynn posing against the neighbour’s post box in the background.